The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Fine performances and a fascinating true story buoy this disappointing adaptation of Rebecca Skloot's bestseller. [21 Apr 2017, p.58]

A beautiful, moving film, and Oprah (as usual) brings it.

It's an emotionally powerful film that does justice to Henrietta, her legacy and her family.

In the end, there's poignancy to how The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks acknowledges how Rebecca's correcting of the record helped to ease this family's pain, but you may wish that the film more polemically recognized Henrietta's place in a long-standing tendency in America to erase black men and women from the reality of their own lives.

None of this would be possible, after all, without a massive core of empathy, both on the part of Lacks's screenwriters in finding a way to convey the feelings and thoughts of a woman who resists exposition and on the part of Winfrey, who brings makes the story's emotionality ring true.

There is traumatic yet necessary catharsis along the way as Henrietta (a luminous Renee Elise Goldsberry) comes into focus, finally getting the respect and thanks she deserves. [17-30 Apr 2017, p.19]

Winfrey’s performance, as Henrietta’s tormented youngest daughter, Deborah, is jump-off-the-screen terrific. ... Director George C. Wolfe (Nights In Rodanthe) has a tough story to tie together--and at times ties himself in knots.

Deborah’s decision to allow Skloot to see her mother’s closely guarded medical records is a major turning point in the book, but it doesn’t register as momentous in the film. That said, Rose Byrne provides an impressive array of reactions as Skloot, even if her character never quite comes alive the way Deborah does. And yet some sequences of the film are quite affecting, in large part thanks to Winfrey’s galvanizing presence.

Though the film’s writing tends to make too much of Rebecca’s bafflement and culture shock as she peers into the lives of the Lacks family, Wolfe never frames the Lacks as sheer spectacle.